Hold the door!
Tue, Oct 25, 2016

My wife and I just got back from a tip to Boise, ID to visit our daughter who goes to college there and catch a Boise State Bronco's football game. On top of an awesome nail-biting win against against a good BYU team to extend their undefeated run, we got to spend some time exploring her new home. We hung out for an afternoon in a small suburb called Hyde Park that looked like a scene from the Gilmore Girls, having ice cream and watching the middle school kids ride home from school laughing and having fun. A group of them were at a table next to us and I heard one of them suggest moving down a few tables so they didn't disturb us and I couldn't hear a single swear word dropped the whole time we were there from that group, seriously?

When we asked our daughter why she liked being back there so much she thought for a moment and said there were a ton of reasons, but one of the more visible ones is that everyone holds the door for others out there. No matter how long it takes for you to get there, they will always wait for you patiently. I know that seems like a small thing, but maybe a civil society is built of a thousand such small things and with this circus of an election cycle through which we are living, coupled with the lack of civility we seem to be showing to each other in this country, maybe that's a good place to start.